Hungary

Pharmaceutical legislation in Hungary already takes into account several of the EU directives. The Medicines Law is in a developmental stage, and the classification of medicines will change in accordance with these directives. For the moment, medicines are classified into four groups: non-prescription medicines, prescription medicines, medicines prescribed by specialists only, medicines used in hospitals only. A fifth group includes herbal and other plant-based preparations which, due to insufficient clinical data, cannot be classified as medicines in Hungary. This group is called "Preparations having therapeutic effect but not considered to be medicines", and is designated by the term "parapharmaceuticals" [78].